this commentary on the editorial ‘the politics and analytics of health policy’ by professor calum paton focuses on two issues. first, it points to the unclear links between ideas, ideology, values, and discourse and policy, and warns that discourse is often a poor guide to enacted policy. second, it suggests that realism, particularly ‘programme theory’ are useful tools for health policy analys...

it is difficult to disagree with the general argument that successful health reform requires a significant degree of policy capacity or that all players in the policy game need to move beyond self-interested advocacy. however, an overly broad definition of policy capacity is a problem. more important perhaps, health reform inevitably requires not just policy capacity but political leadership an...

RLabonté et al entitle their paper in this issue of the International Journal of Health Policy and Management “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Is It Everything We Feared for Health?” Tantalisingly, they do not directly answer the question they pose, and in this commentary, we suggest that it is the wrong question; we should not ‘fear’ the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) at all, rather we should ...

gorik ooms recently made a strong case for considering the centrality of normative premises to analyzing and understanding the underappreciated importance of the nexus of politics, power and process in global health. this critical commentary raises serious questions for the practice and study of global health and global health governance. first and foremost, this commentary underlines the impor...

Let us start with an example of health policy analysis in action. Within that category of countries loosely known as ‘the West’, quite basic differences exist in attitudes to health policy and also actual health policy. Comparing the US with mainland Europe and indeed Canada, for example, one perceives a difference in attitude on the part of the majority towards collectivism and individualism i...

The past 15 years in Hungary have been characterised by unique changes. Apart from democratisation and managing the immediate crises caused by the collapse of the economy in the early 1990s, a strong part of the reforms was a desire to build Western models of health care and the necessary social and economic infrastructure. Hungary was forced to start substantial reengineering of health service...

The call of the editorial of the International Journal of Health Policy and Management regarding the “Need to talk about corruption in health systems” is spot on. However, the perceived difficulties of why this is so should be explored from an actor’s perspective, as they differ for government actors, donors and the research community. In particular, false dilemmas around definition pr...

although the importance of patient participation in the design and evaluation of health programs and services is well-documented, there is scarcity of research with regard to patient association (pa) participation in health policy decision-making processes. to this end, the present study aimed to validate further a previously developed instrument as well as to investigate the degree of pa parti...